Researchers: Close read of Ian Fleming's books shows Agent 007 is an alcoholic

James Bond likely suffered from alcohol-induced tremors

This 1962 file photo shows Ian Lancaster Fleming, the best-selling British author and creator of a fiction character known as secret agent, James Bond. British doctors who carefully read Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond novels say the celebrated spy regularly drank more than four times the recommended limit of alcohol per week. Their research was published in the light-hearted Christmas edition of the journal BMJ on Thursday Dec. 12, 2013.

File | The Associated Press

By Karen KaplanLos Angeles Times

Published: Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, December 13, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

Scientists know that the best way to make a vodka martini is to mix the ingredients with a thin wooden spoon — it combines the ingredients effectively without raising the drink’s temperature the way a metal stirrer would. So why would James Bond, the world’s most sophisticated martini drinker, routinely order his cocktail “shaken, not stirred”?

A trio of British medical researchers believe they have the answer: The heavy-drinking 007 most likely suffered from an alcohol-induced tremor that forced him to shake his martinis. In fact, they argue, the British Secret Intelligence Service agent with a license to kill consumed so much alcohol that he ought to be dead.

“Ideally, vodka martinis should be stirred, not shaken,” the researchers report in the British Medical Journal’s Christmas issue. “That Bond would make such an elementary mistake in his preferences seemed incongruous with his otherwise impeccable mastery of culinary etiquette.”

The BMJ’s Christmas issue is known for its wacky medical reports, but the authors who diagnosed James Bond took the matter quite seriously. For starters, they used the books by Sir Ian Fleming as their source material, not the movies. Two of the 14 books were excluded from the analysis — “The Spy Who Loved Me” was dropped because it was told from the point of view of a waitress who doesn’t introduce Bond until two-thirds of the way into the story, and “Octopussy and the Living Daylights” failed to make the cut because it’s a series of short stories. The other 12 books were read by the study authors, curled up at home in “comfy” chairs.

As they read, the researchers took detailed notes about Bond’s activities, including his drinking. They looked up drink recipes on Wikipedia to figure out the ingredients in each of his cocktails. In cases where the storyline was vague — i.e., Bond “got drunk” or there was an order to “bring in the drink tray” — the researchers made “relatively conservative estimates in the context of his overall drinking habits,” according to the study. Then they crunched all their numbers.

The study authors calculate that the total elapsed time in the 12 novels added up to 123.5 days, during which 007 consumed 9,201.2 grams of pure alcohol. (That’s not the combined volume of his many cocktails — that’s just the amount of 200-proof ethanol.) This works out to 521.6 grams of pure alcohol per week, or 74.5 grams per day.

For the sake of comparison, the British National Health Service advises men not to exceed 168 grams of alcohol per week, with no more than 32 grams on a single day and at least two days per week that are alcohol-free.

Among Bond’s 123.5 recorded days, 48.5 were alcohol-free. But on 36 of those days, he was not alcohol-free by choice: On these occasions, he was locked up in jail, laid up in a hospital or doing a stint in rehab and unable to imbibe. Taking those days out of the equation, the 9,201.2 grams over 87.5 days averages out to 738 grams of pure alcohol per week, or 105.1 grams per day.

But that’s just an average. The peak of 007’s drinking came on Day 3 of the mission described in “From Russia With Love.” During that 24-hour period, 007 drank a whopping 398.4 grams of pure alcohol, the study authors calculated. To consume that much alcohol, you’d have to down about 14 vodka martinis (assuming they’re made with the 100-proof vodka, the strongest option listed on the handy cocktail content calculator from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the National Institutes of Health).

<p>Scientists know that the best way to make a vodka martini is to mix the ingredients with a thin wooden spoon — it combines the ingredients effectively without raising the drink's temperature the way a metal stirrer would. So why would James Bond, the world's most sophisticated martini drinker, routinely order his cocktail “shaken, not stirred”?</p><p>A trio of British medical researchers believe they have the answer: The heavy-drinking 007 most likely suffered from an alcohol-induced tremor that forced him to shake his martinis. In fact, they argue, the British Secret Intelligence Service agent with a license to kill consumed so much alcohol that he ought to be dead.</p><p>“Ideally, vodka martinis should be stirred, not shaken,” the researchers report in the British Medical Journal's Christmas issue. “That Bond would make such an elementary mistake in his preferences seemed incongruous with his otherwise impeccable mastery of culinary etiquette.”</p><p>The BMJ's Christmas issue is known for its wacky medical reports, but the authors who diagnosed James Bond took the matter quite seriously. For starters, they used the books by Sir Ian Fleming as their source material, not the movies. Two of the 14 books were excluded from the analysis — “The Spy Who Loved Me” was dropped because it was told from the point of view of a waitress who doesn't introduce Bond until two-thirds of the way into the story, and “Octopussy and the Living Daylights” failed to make the cut because it's a series of short stories. The other 12 books were read by the study authors, curled up at home in “comfy” chairs.</p><p>As they read, the researchers took detailed notes about Bond's activities, including his drinking. They looked up drink recipes on Wikipedia to figure out the ingredients in each of his cocktails. In cases where the storyline was vague — i.e., Bond “got drunk” or there was an order to “bring in the drink tray” — the researchers made “relatively conservative estimates in the context of his overall drinking habits,” according to the study. Then they crunched all their numbers.</p><p>The study authors calculate that the total elapsed time in the 12 novels added up to 123.5 days, during which 007 consumed 9,201.2 grams of pure alcohol. (That's not the combined volume of his many cocktails — that's just the amount of 200-proof ethanol.) This works out to 521.6 grams of pure alcohol per week, or 74.5 grams per day.</p><p>For the sake of comparison, the British National Health Service advises men not to exceed 168 grams of alcohol per week, with no more than 32 grams on a single day and at least two days per week that are alcohol-free.</p><p>Among Bond's 123.5 recorded days, 48.5 were alcohol-free. But on 36 of those days, he was not alcohol-free by choice: On these occasions, he was locked up in jail, laid up in a hospital or doing a stint in rehab and unable to imbibe. Taking those days out of the equation, the 9,201.2 grams over 87.5 days averages out to 738 grams of pure alcohol per week, or 105.1 grams per day.</p><p>But that's just an average. The peak of 007's drinking came on Day 3 of the mission described in “From Russia With Love.” During that 24-hour period, 007 drank a whopping 398.4 grams of pure alcohol, the study authors calculated. To consume that much alcohol, you'd have to down about 14 vodka martinis (assuming they're made with the 100-proof vodka, the strongest option listed on the handy cocktail content calculator from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the National Institutes of Health).</p>